All articles by Richard Irvine-Brown
Richard Irvine-Brown
Creditplus sees applications and acceptances up
Motor finance broker Creditplus is reporting a rise in acceptance rates, average advances and applications for car credit in the past 12 months. Acceptance rates are up 58% year-on-year for customers applying for car finance and the company has brokered an average loan of £7,714 per customer, up 10% over the same period.
Autorola online remarket values hit 104% of CAP
Europe-wide online vehicle remarketer Autorola has recorded the average mileage, age and value of its online car sales in the UK for 2010 and 2011. The average price for a car purchased online through Autorola, from a sample of 5,000 sales, in 2010 was £8,131, 104% of the value estimated by used car valuation specialist CAP
42% jump in January car financing – FLA
January saw a 24% year-on-year increase in the number of new cars purchased on finance by consumers, reaching 33,271 vehicles, in what the Finance & Leasing Association is calling a surprise leap. The value of advances written on new cars in January 2012 was 42% up on the previous year at £459m Over the three months to January, 104,721 new and 168,365 used cars were sold, each a rise of 9% on the same period the previous year
Fleet Friday: Acfo, Manheim and EVs
Acfo, the association of car fleet operators, has asked UK Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne to review benefit-in-kind taxation for low-emission company cars.
Finance access problems for 73% of dealers
Some 73% of independent car dealers surveyed recently by vehicle information provider HPI say a lack of access to motor finance is damaging their ability to sell cars. As part of the same survey, 43% of those polled expect their profits to be down in the first quarter of 2012, although 17% expect profits to rise. Nearly two-thirds of dealers surveyed told HPI their business was currently profitable and a quarter reported a year-on-year increase in profit.
Subscribe to our Newsletter
Get industry leading news, data and analysis delivered to your inbox
Car Loan 4 U to publish top model requests
Motor finance provider Car Loans 4 U has begun publishing monthly listings of the most popular car models from its non-confidential credit applications data. Car Loans 4 U will use this data to create a record called the Car Finance Car Index, which James Wilkinson, co-director of the company, calls a snapshot on the cars that are proving particularly popular. By number of motor finance applications to Car Loans 4 U, the most popular cars for January were the Vauxhall Astra, Ford Focus, BMW 3 Series and Vauxhall Corsa, mirroring the findings of a recent survey of brokers by Motor Finance magazine.
Remarketing: Part-ex values down, BMW auction set
The value of dealer part-exchange vehicles fell 1.3%, January to February, to £2,348, and overall average values for remarketed values were up by 3.1% to £7,030 over the same period, according to auctioneer Manheim. The results are close to those of British Car Auctions which found the overall value of second-hand cars up 3.7% to £6,244 and part-exchanges down 2.5% to £2,847, over the same period.
Used cars: Fiesta and the North-South divide
The Ford Fiesta was the UKs best-selling used car for a second consecutive year in 2011 in a market which shrank 0.43% from the 2010 figure, according to information services provider Experian. The Fiesta sales were up 1.5% to 290,254 units in a used market of 6.77m cars, eclipsing the new car market of 1.94m units and down 4.4% on the previous year. The top 10 best-selling used cars of 2011 were the same 10 models as the previous year and improved their dominance of the market with all models except the Ford Mondeo and Vauxhall Vectra seeing an increase in sales.
Hyundai and Santander launch UK captive partner
The partnership between Santander Consumer Finance and Hyundai in this country has launched Hyundai Capital UK, the new captive finance partner for both Hyundai and Kia. The news follows the announcement in April 2011 that Hyundai had switched finance partners from Black Horse to Santander and finalised the deal in November.
February new car sales down, retail up – SMMT
Registrations of new cars in the UK were down 2.45% year-on-year for February, and down 51.99% from January, according to figures from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT). The SMMT considers the figures stable as, over the two months, new car sales fell by only 1,514 units, 0.79%, compared to the same period last year. Despite the market being down, private registrations were up 2.1% over January and February, with a slight loss of sales in the fleet and business sector, which was performing relatively worse than last year, according to a spokesperson for the SMMT.